Wednesday, June 27, 2007

I thank you for your mail which I have received.May God bless you and keep you for me.We shall soon celebrate this as soon as the box is sent to you and I come over there so that you should invest this money for me..I thank God also who has brought us together for you to help me.I am very grateful to you for your concern about my situation.I will not let you down when I come to your country. Please call me 00225 08 56 03 92.

I want you to be honest and sincere to me in the investing of this money for I also will always be honest to you in every thingSo please always deal with me in honesty for you are my only hope now to invest this money in a good and lucrative thing as soon as the box is sent to you.

I have received the information you sent.I have already used it and introduced you to the security company.I told them that you are my late husband's foreign business partner,my guidian and the beneficiary of the box.That I am going to join you over there where you can take proper care of me.

So write to them with this information. Tell them exactly what I have said.That you are my husband's foreign business partner,my guidian and the beneficiary of the box deposited with them by my husband .That you want to withdraw the box.Tell them that you are contacting them on my awareness.That they should send the box to you. That I am coming over to join you where you can take care of me.

Please you should not mention to them that the box contains money. Because my husband deposited the box as valued royal costumes.and they do not know that it contains money.If they do it will endanger my life.So please you should not mention that the box has money in it.Just tell them it is the box of valued royal costumes deposited with them by my late husband.

This is the contact address of the security company.You should address the mail to the director;Engr.Jason Garus00225 08 53 17 80Lion Prowl Security &Diplomatic Companylionprowlds@yahoo.co.uk

Please go ahead and contact them at once and mail me to let me know you have contacted them.I am waiting for you urgently.I want us to finish this quickly I want to leave here and start coming to join you as soon as you have received and confirmed the box in your custody. So I want you to hasten this up so I can start coming there for you to help me and invest this money.yours sincerely,Lilian

Note,Please advice me on what you want to invest the money inPlease call me on my phone.You will see my picture here.

Odikwa beautiful o!

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Dearest Lilian,I must say that I am overwhelmed by your beauty. In fact, I cannot even type this letter as I keep clicking back to gaze upon your curvaceous body and luscious lips. Your skin looks as smooth as lily petals - truly the picture of magnificence. How can I even begin to thank you for finding me and writing to me? I don't even want to know how you found me. I just want to declare in all honesty - just as you have done with me - that I will stop at nothing to make sure you find your way to America, to life, to love.

As for how I plan to invest the money: I have always thought of myself as a man who could make it big in this world, given the opportunity. I have had a hard life, but still I struggle on, believing that my time to shine is coming. And, lo and behold, here you come, as an angel from above. Lilian, I believe that you are the answer to many, many years of prayer and fasting. Therefore, I will be investing your dead husband's money in myself. I have calculated that, after paying some bills, buying one or two big screen HDTVs, maybe a house, there will be more than enough money left over to invest in a mail-order business that you and I will manage together. Because, Lilian, I cannot imagine a better way to reward you for all that you have endured than to make you my wife. You don't have to answer me now; just think about it. I know that you will choose the best thing for you and, Lilian, I am the best thing for you.

I'm going to write the security company now. Wish me luck!

Yours forever,

K. Ulutempa (but you can call me K)

**********************************************

UPDATE: The "security company", after receiving my email where I "mistakenly" mentioned the fact that the box has oodles of cash, wrote me back asking for my full details. I was hoping for some backlash and am very bummed that I didn't get even a slight reprimand for being so foolish. I see the careless hand of a Nigerian written all over this. "Lilian" wrote back with this:

Dearest,

I thank you for your urgent mail.I came on computer with strong expectation of your mail.

I thank you for your efforts to get my problem solved.We shall celebrate this when it is over in a way that you will thank God for his miracles.I like the way you write.You must be very learned.Something strongly tells me that you and I are going to have life with its true colours.

What did the security company say? I thank you for you thoughtful and caring words.Dont worry every thing will be alright.

I am waiting for your call so that we can quickly finalise this.Call me.

Lilain00225 08 56 03 92

I'm upset that "she" didn't call me K; I guess she don't love me as much as I lurves her. But no matter. Our relationship is over. I can't be with someone who doesn't understand that someone with no phone can't call until "his" bill is paid with her dead husband's supposed millions. Or maybe I can't be with someone who insists on using the word "guidian", even after I have slipped in a correction or two. But then again, maybe I can't be with someone who has obviously stolen the picture of my estranged cousin Tokunbo and is using it for dubious purposes. Gosh, there are just SO many ways to end this - any thoughts, people?

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

I really dont mean to bother you.But it is urgent and very important at this point that I contact you.Let me quickly introduce myself.I am princess Lilian Kumasi.The former wife to late prince Duke Kumasi .I am 26 years old and I have a daughter who is 5 years old.My late husband was the prince of Buake,a town in Ivory Coast where I lived with him until his death in February 13th 2006.My late husband was a carefree,open-minded and considerate person which I believed contributed largely to his death.He never withheld these qualities from his subjects.The people he ruled.This is why it was easy for him to be poisoned.His death was suspected to have been carried out by one of his subjects..

My husband called me in his palace one faithful Friday afternoon.He told me of the money( 9. 5 million us dollars) he deposited in a security company here in Abidjan.The capital city of Ivory Coast West Africa.He told me this exactly 3 months before his death.As if he knew he was going to die.He put the money in a box and deposited the box with a security company as important royal costumes.Now after my husband's death.His kinsmen and his immediate family are after my life.They want to kill me and inherit my husband's wealth.Since I dont have a male child who will succeed my husband and ascend to the throne.

No one knows about this deposit except the personal advicer to the prince.And I suspect he has something to do with his death.He is the one that told the kinsmen.That is why they are looking for me to get this documents.

I succeeded in sneaking out of the palace at night.I abandoned every thing I labouerd for with my late husband in the palace but I took with me the documents of the money deposited with the security company

I am hiding in a local guest house here in Abidjan.I need you to help me retreive this box and receive it in your country.I want to leave here and come over to your country to begin a new life away from this wicked people that killed my husband immediately you have received the money under your custody.I want you also to help me and invest this money in a good business over there. Please contact me with my email address lilian_kumasi10@yahoo.fr.

I will give you 15% of the money for your help.

Can I rely on you to help me?

I am urgently waiting for you.

Yours sincerely,Lilian Kumasi

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Dear Mrs. Kumasi,

Your plight is truly frightening and touching at the same time. I cannot believe how CRUEL people can be; honestly, you are a very brave woman. I would love to help you and your daughter and the money you are offering will be thanks enough.Just let me know what to do next. I hope we can perform this transaction speedily as I am desperately in need of some cash.

Sincerely,K. Ulutempa

**************************************************Dear Ulutempa, Thanks for your mail i received and your willingness to help me.May God bless you and keep you for me.I promised to love any one that helps me out of this problem and to cherish him for ever.Please bear in mind that this box was deposited by my late husband, in favour of me and all the transaction documents relating to this transaction are here with me and since the death of my late husband i have been finding things very difficult even to eat two times in a day is very difficult for me and as am writing you this mail now,my life is in danger because those evil men that poisoned my late husband are after my life. So please i will like you to speed up very fast for them to send this box to you. I will like to come over to your country to start a new life and please kindly accept me as your sister because right now,i do not have any blood relation here in Africa. Right now,i hide in a local guest house.ELLA MARIS GUEST HOUSE for the safety of my life and please kindly call me on this number as soon as you receive my mail. the receiptionist will call me to the phone

00225 08 56 03 92.

Please kindly call me now. Once you have received my inheritance from the security company then i will come over to your country to start a better life there and invest this money with your help in any good business over there in your country.

Finally,send me your Telephone number,fax number and adress where the box will be brought to you. Also your name in which they will use to deliver the box to you. Please kindly respond to my mail and call me immediately you receive this mail for more details.

When I receive this informations I asked you to send, I will use this informations and introduce you to the security company.I will tell them that you are my late husband's foreign business partner,my guidian and the beneficiary of the box that they should send it to you. And this is also what you will tell them when I give you the contact address of the security company where the box is deposited for you to contact them.Note,once the box is transfered and confirmed in your custody,i will come to your country to invest the money and i need you to help me and invest the money in any good business there. and please do not disappoint or betray me because this is my last hope in my life. Thanks and hope to hear from you today.

Lilian. [picture of rose]

Note.I here by send you my photo,Pls send me yourphoto.And when I give you the contact address of the security company where the box is,please dont tell them that the box contains money because my late husband deposited it as a royal valued costume and they do not know that the box contains money.Please this is for security reasons.

********************************************************Dear Lilian,

I am sorry that I did not receive your email in time to respond yesterday. I recognize the urgency of your situation; I don't want you to suffer any more than you have already suffered. My phone has been cut off due to lack of payment, but I am trusting God that they will have mercy on me and just turn it on one of these days. When that day comes, you will be the first person I call, I swear on my honor.

I looked for your picture, but you never sent it. However, I will still send you mine. I have attached it to this email. I am already looking forward to seeing you and taking care of you and your inheritance. Your money is in good hands with me.

Already falling in love,K. Ulutempa

He/She has not responded and probably never will. Guess he/she wasn't feeling my outfit. All I know is that I am heartbroken and I don't know when I will recover. All those millions - that was my iPhone right there.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

All I want is to be able to surf the net, look at pictures, listen to music and answer my phone all with a mere flick of my finger.

I've had my Motorola Razr for less than six months, but held against this phenomenal gadget, it already seems like this stupid piece of crap has caused me an entire lifetime of suffering.

Every time I see the iPhone commercials (and there are surprisingly few of them), I try to rip out whole clumps of my hair. I claw at my face and unleash guttural howls at my TV, which now suddenly seems unworthy to capture the very iPhone commercial being aired. But Steve Jobs doesn't hear my cries. Steve Jobs doesn't feel my pain, the pain of a veritable gadget junkie. I have three cameras, four mobile phones, two home phones, a digital voice recorder, a tape recorder, two laptops, two TVs and two iPods, yet none of these have what it takes to quench this yearning inside me for yet another electronic gadget - the gadget that surpasses them all.

This sucks.

It's funny - for someone so cheap and financially practical, I will spare no expense to buy electronic equipment. I'm like the man I never was.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

In the spirit of putting my business out there, I hereby announce that I have decided to start seeing a psychiatrist. I'm not actually nuts, as the title of this post suggests, but I do have one or two issues that I need help sussing out.

Now, ordinarily, I'd be loathe to admit what I view as a personal weakness in a public space, but I absolutely must talk about my shrink, for whom I have already developed a mild infatuation. He's a little man, short and lean, who wears hunter-green pants and has a hairline which suggests that much of his head is taken up with thinking and not the more mundane task of growing hair. The starkness of the top half of his head is complemented by the graying, dark brush which covers the bottom half almost entirely. This means that I can't actually look at his mouth, which is the area of the face on which I tend to focus most of my attention. Instead, I am drawn to his eyes, two seagreen pools, set close together in his intelligent head, over a nose that resembles a streamlined missile. He's not particularly attractive (not to me, anyway) but his is definitely an interesting face and one that I can get used to staring at once or twice a week.

What I like most about him, however, is the fact that I know he won't coddle me. He's not going to tell me what I want to hear, he's not going to sugarcoat his opinions. And when he tells me this cold, hard truth, he will say it with a sneer. The good doctor is, in a sense, not unlike me. It can't be a good sign that I already look forward to the day that he will provoke me to unleash years of unexpressed wrath into his almond-shaped face. But I must admit that I cannot wait to see this man again. Certainly.

Our first meeting went quite well, better than I expected. I walked into his waiting room, the only person there, and sat in the low, leather seat of the sofa. After I sat down, I noticed the sound of classical music streaming into the room from an unknown location. It wasn't what I would call soothing, but I suppose it was somewhat comforting to have this audible cliche, something I could expect or recognize in this strange arena. As I waited, I flipped through Psychology Today, one of many magazines that rested on the single end table in the corner. The first article I read discussed the overprotecting of teenagers - how parents severely undermined the capabilities of their teens, effectively extending their childhood into their mid-twenties, and how it was ruining their lives. The writer made good points, particularly when one considers that not even 100 years ago, people had already lived two lifetimes by the age of eighteen, where they can't even buy a can of beer today. But that's another story for another time.

I was reading about conquering social anxiety when the doctor walked out to meet me. With careful movements and a low, measured tone of voice, he ushered me into his office. I was inwardly amused to note that he did have a couch, but I chose to sit in one of the two leather chairs he also had. He sat in the other, opposite me.

And we spoke.

Once, he was describing what his role as therapist would be - to my uninitiated self - and I felt, with horror, an unwarranted bubble of laughter rising in my throat. Nothing was funny, especially since I was still squeezing the damp tissue that I had just used to wipe tears and a little snot off my face, but he just looked so serious, this elvish man, with his no-nonsense attitude, yet seemingly genuine concern for my well being. Perhaps I was just relieved. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have an able person in my corner who can help me become the person I know I am (somewhere in there), and it feels...promising. So maybe I will learn to "cool my temper" after all.

Now, my point in sharing this is not to merely to give gist. This is the thing: psychiatry/psychology are virtually taboo in our culture - I get this. Only one Nigerian I know has ever been to see a shrink, and that only because the shrink was a relative (which is, also, another story for another time - a Nigerian psychologist...oh joy!). We abhor revealing our inner selves to strangers, and especially having to pay to do so. Few of us, if any, believe that mind doctors have any special skills that we don't already possess, all of us, on some level. I used to think that also, until I discovered that the majority of my family and friends are not equipped to help me think through some of my issues. Enter my good doctor.

But now, some of my people are not happy with me. I am, among other things, foolish and selfish for having chosen to do this, and I wonder: why? Why is it such a terrible thing to get someone else to listen to me, and then give me strategies for changing the way my mind works? Or is the problem that I would choose to go to someone other than a friend or relative? If it is, then that just makes my friends selfish and a bit egotistical to boot. So this is my point: it is really OK to lie on that couch, and get someone to figure out why you think and act the way you do. It is really OK to have a chat with someone who does this for a living, who can address the ongoing stresses you might have and help you alleviate them. Your priest/pastor doesn't always have the answer, nor does your mama, nor does Ifeoma, your childhood friend. And deciding to do this doesn't mean you love them any less. It just means you recognize their shortcomings (and on some level, aren't afraid to let them know that).

That is all.

(No pity, "we love yous", "go for it!" or other embarrassing comments of that nature allowed. I'm just venting.)

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About Me

I take the difficult paths in life as self-inflicted punishment for who I am, but I'm on the path to learning self-appreciation, if not love. I tend to be attracted to the things in life that are not so good for me, but what better way to learn? This blog will contain musings that have been chewed, swallowed, and regurgitated throughout history, but maybe you'll see a uniqueness in my perspective. This is the Hyena's Belly, where the dead carcasses of old news and subjects long explored have found a way to nourish and rejuvenate a growing soul. Enjoy.